Category Archives: Addiction

A life coach told me soon after meeting me that I was “visionary.” I just can’t help but see the “big picture” pretty much everywhere I look. I can see the good and the bad all at the same time. This can be frustrating if I see something (or someone) headed in the wrong direction. This can be useful if I am planning something. I can choose to use my personality trait for good, or for evil. In the words of Mr. Monk, “It’s a gift, and a curse.”

Personality traits are like that, a gift AND a curse. You and I were pretty much born the way we are, we didn’t have a say in the matter. We are like lumps of newly formed clay, ready to be shaped by family, time, and circumstances. Very occasionally that shaping forms a near-perfect human that can manage life well. But mostly, we turn out slightly misshapen, with an oddly placed handle here, or a slightly twisted rim there. Then we become adults. All of that molding and shaping that had been going on by the people in charge of us comes to a screeching halt, and, well, we are what we are.

Do you feel like this inside?

Then, we go through the fires that hardens the clay and solidifies the shape we were when we stepped into adulthood. Because life is like that. Trial by fire. Will we survive, or won’t we? Sure, we have to accept ourselves for who we are, and so should our loved ones. But, I truly think that this only goes so far. It’s hard to be around someone with an anger problem. It’s hard to keep throwing paddles and a boat out to someone who is stubbornly (yes, I say “stubbornly” because you and I can choose to be despondent, or not) stuck in a pond of despondency and despair.

We start to feel the the moments that the oddly placed handle gets in the way, causing all sorts of problems. We feel embarrassment when the slightly twisted rim keeps spilling the liquid inside at all the wrong times. Sometimes whole pieces fall off, or we are dashed to the tile floor and break. In many cases, people throw up their hands after several failures and say, “I’m never going to change!” We are what we are, right? Why bother trying? Well, yes, and no.

The truth is, we can’t change our genetic inheritance, but we do have a choice in how we use those traits: we can choose to stay the way we were shaped, or we can choose to, effectively, start over by smashing up the broken vessel and getting some fresh clay. You already have the ingredients you need: personality traits, learning experiences, belief systems, relationships, and etc. You can decide which ingredients you are going to use, and which you are going to throw out. You can decide how those personality traits will manifest in the real world. In other words, you decide who you are and how you behave. You get to choose the colors and the shape. That’s right. Shall I say it again?

YOU GET TO DECIDE.

Frankly, It really doesn’t matter what came before. All of those childhood experiences that brought to where you are don’t matter much. What matters is what you decide today. Do you struggle with fear (like me)? You can decide today to make a step toward freedom from that fear. Do you struggle with an addiction that rules your life? You can decide today to get yourself to the appropriate help according to your needs. It’s your choice. It’s up to you. You could change from the above to this:

Hello again! It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for another testimony about overcoming emotional difficulties. I don’t have another person lined up, so I am going to dish on myself. So here we go…

It’s kinda tough to pick just one experience that I’ve had in the past 22 years that highlights an emotional difficulty that I have overcome because a) there are so many, and b) they are all interconnected which makes them complex and difficult to articulate clearly.

I have mentioned that my mother was an addict. Her last addiction was prescription painkillers, which ended up taking her life in a (presumably) accidental overdose. She was secretive about her addiction, and it was not immediately obvious to me because I had no knowledge about addiction during my childhood. However, the symptoms of her addiction problem were usually at the forefront of her parenting because she was either at best confusing, or, at worst, abusive.

For example, my mother would periodically become very angry with the rest of the family. Why she was angry with us was almost always a mystery. One of the confusing things she would do during these random periods of mystery anger was to not let my sister and I do the weekly cleaning. She would storm around, bang things, with a face screwed up in anger doing the cleaning. I would feel awkward and strange. I was afraid to say anything to mother for fear of upsetting her further. Richelle and I walked around as if the floor was made of nails (sharp side up) while giving each other furtive looks of confusion and despair. After a few hours of this, I would be practically begging for her to let me do the cleaning. Anything to ease the stress and tension I felt. Then, just as mysteriously, she would get over it. Very occasionally there was some kind of discussion that really didn’t make any sense or have anything to do with reality.

As a child, these sorts of events caused confusion and fear. This started embers burning in my soul that would smolder into my adulthood. As I began working through the hurts of my childhood in counseling, I began to see my mother’s transgressions with anger, hurt, disappointment, and frustration. These emotions ignited the long- burning embers from adolescence into raging flames. It took a lot of years, and work, before I could even consider forgiving my mother.

For me, forgiving my mother meant giving up the right to be angry with her. And believe me, I had felt I had every right to be angry with her for her transgressions. I think some of you may even agree with me. However, if unleashed, my anger could be a destructive force that wreak havoc in most areas in life. I was deeply invested in my rights. So much so, that God, in His infinite wisdom, had to work every angle to help me to see that holding things against my mother was actually holding myself prisoner to my own anger. He had some pretty huge mountains to move. Fiery, raging, burning volcanos. He showed me that I would be paying the consequences for my for my self-righteous attitude, like so much volcanic ash. I would end up psychologically and spiritually dead, like those poor people on Pompeii.

As God labored to show me the truth, the light began breaking through my eyes, which were tightly shut against it. Truth always stand the test of time, regardless of what we think or feel about it. I eventually knew I had a choice to make. On one hand, my right to be angry with my mother, on the other, forgiving her and moving on. Forgiving her meant giving up my rights, but it also meant freedom. Freedom from the burdens of pain. Freedom from the consequences of my choices. Freedom to live life to it’s fullest.

As you can probably guess, I chose to give up my rights. And, indeed, I felt freer. The rage no longer held me captive, torturing me incessantly, burning me from the inside out.

Today, I mostly look on my relationship with my mother regret and sadness, but, I am (mostly) not angry. If she were still alive, I might even attempt to have a relationship with her, which is saying something.

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Now, it’s your turn… Do you have something you overcame that you would like to share with the rest of the world?

It’s time again for another installment of Testimonial Tuesday. I am the oldest of four, and my sister is the second oldest. She and I have been through a lot together. Although we had different experiences and perceptions of our childhood experiences, we have been on a similar journey. Each individual step in our journeys is invariably linked to the other person’s. My sister describes a part of her journey in overcoming her difficulties. So without further, I give to you my sister Richelle Knapp…

As I was growing up, my mother was hard to figure out, to say the least. She was very mean to me and my siblings most of the time. But other times, she was really nice and fun to be around. She singled me out for a period of physical abuse. She was a drug addict. She did not really know how to raise children.

I don’t think she intended to be this way. I don’t think she set out to abuse drugs. But her background was a big part of it. Her family was a mess with alcoholic parents. She and her siblings were ripped apart when she was very young. She was largely a victim of circumstance. But sadly she did become an addict. She was always in a deep grip of denial about her addiction.

Her life impacted mine in deep and profound ways. Everything that happened to her and to me as a result of her problems and our relationship resonated for years even after her death. When she passed it took me a while to figure out that I was not mourning her death, but her life. After her passing, I had many emotional and mental problems. I was losing touch with reality and regressing back to my childhood. I was having almost constant anxiety attacks. I was also having flashbacks of things I did not understand. I had a vague feeling of ongoing fear and even terror at times. My poor husband went through it all with me and was my main support. I could not figure out how to function. I could not work or do much of anything else. My emotions were in constant upheaval. One day I would be okay, and the next I could not get out of bed. I was lost in a sea of mental and emotional problems, and I was drowning.

When things got really bad, my sister ended up coming out to help me. She brought me back to her house to stay for a month and to begin to get me the help that I needed. I went through something called inner healing. Inner healing is a way in which God is able to come in and make significant changes to a person’s spiritual landscape. I had Dissociative Integrative Disorder. Through the inner healing, process God revealed the fragments of my psyche and integrated them back together again. When it was over, I felt whole for the first time in a long time. But I also felt very fragile, as if I could break very easily again.

Later in the year, I came in contact with a woman who was instrumental in helping me to become stronger emotionally, and mentally. During the time she counseled me, we did certain exercises to help me to better understand what was going with me. I realized I still blamed my mother for the majority of the problems in my life. I realized that I had not forgiven her for just about everything. One of the most important exercises we did was called The Vault. My counselor had me talk through a list of things I had made in a previous meeting that had to do with my life. I had to decide what I wanted to “keep” so that I could deal with it still, and what I wanted to “lock” in the vault and move on from. As I worked through the list I could feel myself suddenly getting lighter and lighter emotionally. It was a significant time for me, a real turning point. I left that session feeling completely different. I felt very nearly completely healed. It was finally a new beginning for me. For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

I am 38 years old. I have been happily married for over 4 years. I live in Bear, DE with my husband. I believe that anything can be overcome if you are willing to do whatever it takes; if you are willing to do the hard stuff to be healed and ultimately be free.

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So, tell me, do you want to write about so something you have overcoming?

This is the beginning of a new series. I am pleased and thrilled to start this with a post from my Aunt Barbara. She is my mother’s older sister. I have several fond memories of my Aunt Barbara from my childhood, but my favoritest of all was the day she gave me some earrings in a little porcelain box for my birthday that had a rose on it. She told me that I was created to be unique and special. No one else is like me. I don’t know if I still have that little box, but the memory is still with me. Even after all these years.

Aunt Barbara agreed to share her experiences with alcoholism with the world. So here you go…

I believe we are all born as a new, fresh garden. The ideals and morals are taught, from our parents, dictate how our garden will flourish and nourish. I, unfortunately, was raised by two practicing alcoholic parents. Their disease became so bad that I and five siblings were placed in foster homes and torn apart.

To this day I have no idea where my siblings are, except my younger sister who passed away with her addiction. In this environment, my garden was not well-tended, but trashed and told that I had no rights to protect or defend the boundaries of my life. This carried on into my adulthood, and I allowed anyone and anything in to my garden that became trashed and a toxic waste site. I lived with abuse, guilt and anger strewn all over my yard, and the only escape was with what I knew best, alcohol. Now, not only did I allow the wrong people in my yard, I got to the point that alcohol would ease the pain and I did not care to tend my garden, I could survive in a blur.

Four years ago I was lucky enough to have survived a car accident that totaled my car and a fire hydrant, but allowed me the opportunity to look at my yard. What a mess. Waste and lack of care was killing my garden, I had no idea how to clean out the weeds and life with any control over my garden. I was fortunate to check into a six month alcohol recovery program, and now I can look at each new day with surprise and gladness in my heart that I can trend my garden. I have a choice what I grow, and I no longer need to tend other people’s garden or allow weeds or garbage in my garden.

This is what ‘Boundaries” are all about. I suggest if you are struggling, look around your garden, are there weeds of distrust and fear, lack of responsibility, addiction or inability to live life fully in your space? If so, you can learn to heal your soil, yank out the weeds and live life so much more fully. You may not even know what you want to grow; fear can let you stay at the comfortable junk yard.

But, with some work, you can proudly life in a beautiful garden. There is a book “Boundaries” by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend that explain how we can” learn to say yes, how to say no take control of your life”. I wish all a chance to recover their yard and be the beauty God intended you to be.

Barbara Light is a senior citizen with six beautiful, wonderful adult children and eight grandchildren, with another on the way. She is finally going to college as a fulfillment of a long ago dream. She is also a recovering alcoholic. This is her story, and she hope it helps just one other person out in their garden.

As the result of my “fat cats are fat because they are lazy post”, someone suggested that Fluffy has an owner, or as my friend called the owner, an enabler. And the enabler is to blame. My response to that is, well, yes, and no.

(side note: Fluffy is a cat. Fluffy cannot be responsible for herself. Fluffy’s owner is definitely to blame.)

So, let’s define what an enabler is according to my friend, and yours, the New Oxford American Dictionary:

enable |enˈābəl|verb [ trans. ]give (someone or something) the authority or means to do something : the evidence would enable us to arrive at firm conclusions.

[ trans. ] make possible: a number of courses are available to enable an understanding of a broad range of issues.

The term enabler is particularly prevalent when dealing with addicts. And I’m not just talking about drugs and alcohol. I’m talking about any behavior pattern that serves as a buffer or as numbing agent against psychological pain.

An enabler is someone who gives someone else the authority or means to do something. In other words, you want candy, an enabler will buy you candy. They do this for many different reasons. Some enablers enable addictive behavior because they want to keep the peace. Some like feeling like they have power over someone else. Some enable because they feel they have no choice. Some enable because they feel special and important. And the list goes on.

The impression I get from hearing other people talk about enablers is that the enabler is to blame for the addict’s problems. “If only Tom would stop enabling Carrie’s behavior she would stop” is rather rampant idea.

I believe that is only half true.

In my humble opinion, enabler’s are not solely to blame. Enabling behavior is only half of the picture. Here is what enablers are actually doing:

Encouraging bad behavior (directly, or indirectly)

Supporting bad behavior

Helping bad behavior

Making it easier for the addict to engage in addictive behavior

Notice I didn’t say that enablers are forcing the addict to engage in addictive behavior. Because, it’s still the addicts choice. They still can choose to do what they want to do. The addict is allowing the enabler to enable.

I believe enablers and addicts are in a symbiotic relationship. Each feeds the other BS in a cyclical manner. Both suffer equally from their sick behavior with similar delusions. In other words, the enabler and the addict are both to blame.

Encouraging an enabler to stop enabling is still the right thing to do. They should stop. But that will only take care of half of the problem. Be aware the addict will still engage in addictive behavior whether an enabler helps or not.

So, encourage the enablers in your life to stop enabling. Show them how their behavior is hurting themselves and the person they are enabling. And, hope for the best

I remember reading a book, a work of fiction, that described a battle between two kingdoms. The good king was defeated in battle. One of his son’s was killed. As punishment for being defeated, he was chained to the dead body of his son front to front, and left there to die. Sorry. I know that’s pretty gruesome, but I wanted you to get my point.

This is how depression can be for me. Chained to a dead part of myself, wishing release would come for me. It’s like living with one foot in the land of the dead, and one foot in the land of the living. It is a half-life lived in terror of truly sinking into death.

Some days, I just want to be left alone. Scratch that. MOST days I just want to be left alone. I want to be left alone to think and drown in my own pool of misery. Me, myself, and I like our little pity parties. I can get pretty grumpy if it goes too far. I don’t get much done. I hid and avoid like the best of them. I become an emotional couch potato.

But life happens all around me, whether I like it or not. My son still comes to me in the morning for snuggles and kisses. He looks to me to succor and support him in these tender years. He wants me to interact on a deeper level than I’d like to sometimes. It’s not that I don’t love him, it’s that I sometimes I feel like an empty well: I have nothing to give. It’s not fair to him to give him my scraps, and then hope he turns out okay. He may later resent me for “not being there.”

My husband needs support too. At our best, we reciprocate life to one another. We share in the deep bonds of marriage. Empty wells have not much to give into that sort of thing. Not to mention friends, church, commitments, and so on. Like I said, life happens, whether I like it or not.

Some days it’s all I can do to focus on what’s going on around me. Some days it’s all I can do not feel utter despair and hopelessness. Some days it’s hard to believe that life can be better than it currently is for me. Some days, death would be easier than taking one more step up my metaphorical mountain.

Every day is struggle. I have to make a choice. I have to choose life, or choose to be half-dead, or choose to be all dead. It’s up to me. ‘Cause you see, I believe there’s more to life than this. I believe it can get better. I believe I can be free of this some day.

Depression is one of the toughest things to overcome. Depression turns in on itself and becomes an out-of-control tumbleweed of despair, loneliness, and hopelessness growing bigger and stronger day-by-day. The more you see life through this lens, the more things look bad. The more things look bad, the more depressed you feel. It feeds on itself. It grows exponentially. One might think there is no way to overcome depression.

They would be wrong.

There are a variety of ways that to overcome depression. My best, and first action, is get on anti-depressant when it is so bad I cannot see my way out. I am chronically under-produce serotonin. Prozac helps to keep serotonin in my synapses longer. Next, is to seek out some kind of therapy. Usually, I go to various counselors in my church for spiritual guidance and prayer. Then, with the help of God and others, I keep working out why I am depressed in the first place. I keep working at it till I feel good enough to come off the Prozac. You can choose to manage your depression without medication or therapy. But you have to be strong-willed to keep yourself at check. You need to have a strong goal in mind.

These days, I have attempted to produce more serotonin by exercising regularly. This method seems to be going okay, but I don’t recommend it for those who are inexperienced at managing depression.

Some people meditate. I pray, which is a form of meditation. I need to connect with my Divine Healer, with my Source of Life, with the Author of My Salvation. Right now, Jesus is my Prozac. I go to God, the same way, my son comes to me. I seek succor and strength to keep on keeping on when the mountain seems to steep today.

Some people overeat (like me), attempting to fill their hole with food, especially food that falsely replaces the missing neurotransmitters (this is why people like chocolate so much when they are sad). Some people drink alcohol, some do drugs. Some have lots of sex. These aren’t methods that I recommend. They are false prophets that fill your mind with false goodness. And it never lasts. And it just reproduces negativity and despair.

Sometimes I use self-talk to snap myself out of my thick, soupy fog. Quoting scripture to myself works for me. Particularly Psalm 42 and the famous Psalm 23. I literally talk myself out of depression.

Depression can be overcome. Slowly, steadily, and surely. Someday, I will get there.

I was going to write something further about isolation, but that has fizzled out. Sorry for the sudden left turn, but I have to go where there is inspiration. I was preening my ego (hey, when you have an audience of 1, don’t tell me you don’t need an ego boost to keep on keeping on) by reading over my previous 7 posts.

As promised, I am going to beat you with my “Tough Love” bat for just a little while.

I went back to my first post and found the term “your little self-imposed prison.”

As in, “YOU chained YOURSELF to this wall.”

As in, “You have the key to get out of there you silly person, so use it.”

As in, “It’s time to move on.”

As in, “Enough is enough.”

As in, “Your only kidding yourself that this is a good idea.”

Let me explain.

Stuff happens. People hurt us. We hurt people. We learn from previous experiences to react in a certain way to a set of circumstances that have familiar features. For example, I have always had a tough time trusting men. I sometimes feel threatened by men who seem to be flirting with me, especially if they are significantly older men. I would give them dirty looks, I would feel the “fight or flight” hormones coursing through my veins, my stomach would hurt, my thoughts would swirl out of control, I would feel fear. I learned not to trust older men because my father sexually abused me. He could not be trusted in so many ways. I learned to fear him because he caused me significant pain. As a child, it is normal and natural to feel fear in these sorts of circumstances. God made our brains to cope with painful events in particularly helpful ways (i.e. dissociation). But what about when I became an adult? Was feeling fear actually helpful? Did I need to worry about being hurt EVERY single time? Every flirting, older man does not mean to harm me. Reacting with anger and fear every, single time this occurs is not helpful to me now. Being cautious is good, but I don’t need to overreact.

At some point, I had a choice. I could stay chained to this emotional response, if I wanted to. After all, I am an adult and have the right to choose (you did know that, right?). What are the ramifications to reacting with fear and anger in this situation? Well, let’s start with the physical:

Production of the feel good hormone “serotonin” is disrupted leading to depression.

The heart is strained and leads to heart disease

There is an increased risk for stroke

The immune system is suppressed and prone to causing an inflammatory response

Eating disorders can develop which leads to weight gain, anorexia, or bulimia

Diabetes can develop

Body aches can develop

Sleep can be disturbed

Normal sexual function is disrupted

Memory, concentration, and learning is affected

Alopecia, eczema, psoriasis, and other skin disorders can get worse

Substance abuse can develop

(Information taken from an article located at University of Maryland Medical Center’s website)

Relationally, men in my life would constantly feel challenged and uncomfortable around me. I would not develop any normal or healthy relationships with men. Emotionally, I would constantly pay the price for my poor choices. I would be in constant state of turmoil. I would always be uptight.

Out of an intense need for self-preservation, I could choose to live my life this way.

I could choose to be chained to my little prison of fear and anger.

Or, I could choose to take my key, unlock my fetters, and walk out of there.

I could choose change.

Change in how I approach relationships with the men in my life.

Work on being calmer around men in general.

Not give dirty looks to men.

Not overreact.

Not feel an adrenaline rush every single time.

How does one do this?

First you start by believing that you can change.

Decide that change is what you want.

Talk to yourself about this.

Talk to others.

Talk to God (if you believe in a helping God, like me).

Look for resources.

Work at it.

Don’t give up.

Understand the truth of the situation.

Use your critical thinking skills.

Remind yourself you wanted this change…

Believe me, unchaining yourself and moving on is the best thing for you!

Everything is a process. I am still in the process of overcoming a multitude of sins on my part and my parents part. It is really difficult to say out loud things that might hurt other people. So, I sit here and struggle with how much to say, and how much to reveal about myself this early in the game. Sometimes, I even doubt myself, my story.

And then…

…well, I look back at all of the work that God has accomplished in me. I look back at who I used to be and who I am now. I see the differences in my personality, my thought patterns, and my way of relating to others. And I ask myself, how can my story NOT be real? How can I NOT share the things that MIGHT hurt other people?

I need to share for your benefit, and for mine.

I was born in 1970 to two hurting people. My mother gave birth to me carrying her own issues. Some of those issue were passed on. Some of which she continued to act out for the rest of her life which ended in an accidental overdose in her early 50s. My father I know less about, he is more of an enigma. My parents divorced when I was about 6. My mother remarried when I was about 9. I really liked my stepfather, and I’m pretty sure he liked me. I grew up confused and full of self-doubt. My mother did a pretty good job of contributing to these two elements. By the time I graduated from high school I really had no clue who I was, what I wanted from life, or anything else for that matter. I sunk into my first deep depression with a touch of dissociation. I spent the whole summer after graduating depressed, and conflicted.

I eventually got a job and met my first husband through a mutual friend. My mother and I got into an argument, she tried to hit me, so I left home suddenly at age 19 and moved in with my boyfriend. Unbeknownst to me, I was pregnant with my first son at the time. Not long after this sudden change in my universe, I started to experience flashbacks. I would get “stuck” in a frame of mind that was both completely foreign and completely familiar. I had no clue what was going on.

Fortunately, I started into counseling right away. I have been at it for 22 years. With the help of God, and other people, I have changed. I have been through many different kinds of counseling, individual psychotherapy, group counseling, inner healing, deliverances, to name a few. As a matter of fact, I just finished yet another turn at counseling with a wonderful person.

I have been on Prozac, Wellbutrin, Cymbalta, Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, and a couple of other medications I can’t remember over the years. All helpful and useful tools for helping me with my struggle to overcome.

Right now I am not on any meds and am not in counseling. I feel pretty good, most of the time. I still struggle madly with anxiety and depression at times, but God and therapy gets me through.

I am almost done my Bachelor’s program in psychology and will be moving into a Master’s program for counseling at a local university. The goal is to professionally help others the way I have been helped. I now know that I was born with a gift of counseling and teaching. I must be what I was meant to be.

Annnnnd, I think I will stop here for now. I will reveal more information about myself as time goes on, especially as they pertain to what I am talking about.

I don’t think it is any coincidence that I found this quote in my Facebook feed today: “Problems are like washing machines, they twist us, spin us, and knock us around, but in the end, we come out cleaner, brighter, and better than before” (Author Unknown).

If we are really (and I mean brutally, fist-in-your-face) honest with ourselves, this is a very true statement.

And now, I will say something bold: Problems just are, whether we like it or not. Stuff happens. Life sucks. Often, circumstances suck. Sometimes, people suck )(I admittedly suck sometimes). And more importantly, we have a choice (Wait, did you know that?). We can respond well to these problems, or not. We can overcome the problem, or not. It’s. All. Up. To. You. It’s up to you how to respond. It’s up to you to make a change in how you deal with the things that come your way. You are not forever doomed to be a victim of your circumstances, your childhood, your bad relationship, your anger problem, or your “whatever”. That’s right darlin’, you CAN change. Yes, you heard me right.

You may ask me, “How do YOU know?”. And I would respond with, “Cuz I been there done that.” I am changed-from-the-inside-out person. I used to be shy, I’m not anymore. I used to have multiple personalities, now I don’t. I used to lack confidence, now I am a fairly confident person. I used to totally suck at relationships, now I suck less (hey, nobody’s perfect). I used to respond to everything with anger and fear, now I take the time to really try to think through the reality of the situation, check my resources, and respond as appropriately as I can. I used to be bossy know-it-all, well I…ahem…I guess I still am that way. (If my sister reads this, she can verify what kind of person I used to be, and what kind of person I am today. Right sis? *clears throat* RIGHT, sis? Come on, be nice!)

This blog is about the process in between getting in the washing machine and coming out cleaner and brighter and better than you were before. You, and I (and the kid down the street whose mom MAKES him wash his own clothes. The nerve!) both know that when you put clothes in the washing machine it takes time for the clothes to come out clean. First you have to put in the soap, then you have to choose the right settings (you know, “Normal”, “Perm Press”, “Hot/Cold” “Cold/Cold”, and etc.), start the water, and wait for the machine to agitate, spin, rinse, and spin again. Like I said, it’s a process. Changing behavior and thinking patterns is a process, you start with Step A, then move to Step B…I think you get the picture.

More than anything, I want you to succeed in life. I want you to be who you are meant to be (Haven’t got a clue? Contact this guy, he’ll help you figure it out). But, you have to be willing to see some things differently, you have to be willing to knock down the walls of your little self-imposed prison. You have to be willing to work at it. And, it ain’t gonna be easy. But, if getting knocked about a bit means you will be cleaner and brighter and better able to handle life’s problems, then the pain of the process is worth it, right? Right? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. RIGHT?!

I thought so.

Okay, so let’s get started: Choose one thing you want to work on…I’ll give you a minute to think about.

Go ahead, it’s okay.

Just one thing, however small it may be. It’s worth changing for a better tomorrow.

My relationship with and my feelings towards my mother are complicated. Honestly, she was not a very good mother. In fact, I’d say she was was a terrible mother. It would be easy to just stop there and just hate her. Jesus won’t let me just hate her, hence the complicated feelings. My mother had it just as bad, or worse, as I did growing up. According to her story, her father abused her. He was also an alcoholic as was her mother. I never knew my grandparents, so I cannot attest to what kind of people they were. But, I don’t have any reason to doubt her story.

My mother just couldn’t deal with life. She was alcoholic, adulterer, and a drug addict. My mother was overbearing, confusing, mean, and selfish. I never knew if I was coming or going with her. I never really knew if she loved me or not. She didn’t believe me I talked about the abuse that happened with my father. She claims she didn’t know or notice anything.

When I was 19, I had met a man that was strong and tall and cared about my safety, or at least I thought so at the time. My mother threatened to to hit me one day, so I left with this man’s help. For the next 14 years, I kept myself separate from my mother. I tried for one year in the middle, until things went south again and I split.

Then my mother overdosed on opiate based painkiller about 8 years ago. This was quite a shock and started the present journey I am on trying to cope with both the relief I feel at her death, and the sadness that I feel because I was never able to reconcile with her.

So now, even after all these years, I still feel have confused and complicated feelings.

God wants me to forgive my mother, over and over again. He wants me to let go of my past and try to feel empathy towards my mother’s plight. He wants me to heal from the wounds.

So, I keep pushing forward and keep trusting that He knows best, because, well, He does know best.